O'Shea insists improved performance and Aviva crowd can turn Greek result on its head
In contrast to a club career that weighed with so much expectation, John O’Shea believes the tempering of it ought to contextualise Ireland’s present plight.
The centurion has returned this year as one of Stephen Kenny’s assistants for a Euro campaign that is over from a qualification perspective with three games left.
Reaching a major tournament, something O’Shea achieved twice, involves going to war with group rivals, he says, and Ireland have been wounded two defeats, most recently, to France and Netherlands at home.
It was the Greek tragedy in June, however, that left them vulnerable to the mortal blow of last month.
Next Friday offers an opportunity to avenge defeat against O’Shea’s former manager, Gus Poyet, albeit a belated and futile version.
“It’s natural in football but there has to be a realisation of the opposition we’re facing and what we must go to war with,” he said about the negativity around another prematurely doomed campaign under Kenny.
“If you weigh all those things up, then you’d must have, you’d hope, a bit of common sense but we’ll see.
“If you take our performances from the recent France and Holland games, and then Greece, in isolation, that was one where we felt we didn’t do ourselves justice in.”
The ease with which Poyet outwitted, and his players outmuscled, Ireland were the more worrying aspects of another single goal defeat.
All the more bewildering was the flatness in the display, given the long break between the club season and international window was mitigated by training camps in Bristol and, principally, Turkey.
O’Shea is confident Friday 13th in Dublin won’t descend into another fright night like what was endured by being caught cold in humid Athens.
“Greece had a very
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